~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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US labels Vietnam rights crackdown 'disturbing'

HANOI - The United States finds Vietnam's crackdown on dissidents "disturbing," the US ambassador said Wednesday after police for the second time stopped him from meeting with several activists' wives. The communist government's recent series of arrests and upcoming trials of activists "works against US and Vietnamese efforts to strengthen our relationship," ambassador Michael Marine told a media briefing, describing the actions as "disturbing to the US."

"The deteriorating situation is becoming a larger and larger part of our dialogue," he said, adding that the issue "frankly has reached a point of taking us away from discussing other points." He said Vietnamese security forces had for a second time in recent weeks prevented a meeting he had scheduled with the wives or mothers of five dissidents by stopping four of the women from coming. "One individual, the wife of Nguyen Vu Binh, was able to reach my house," he said, referring to the spouse of an imprisoned journalist. "The others were preventing from coming, either by being called into police stations for discussion or having people outside their home preventing them coming," Marine said. "In one case, one individual was intercepted on her way to my house."

Vu Thuy Ha, the wife of cyber-dissident Pham Hong Son, who is under house arrest in Hanoi, told AFP she was involved in a traffic accident on her way to Marine's house and then detained by police. "I was in front of the opera when two men hit my motorbike," she said, referring to a traffic circle close to the ambassador's residence. Immediately after the accident in which she suffered minor injures, she said, "policemen in uniform asked me to follow them to the police station. I was kept there two hours without any official report being issued."

Agence France Presse - April 25, 2007.


Vietnam blocks relatives' access to U.S. envoy

HANOI - For the second time this month, police prevented relatives of Vietnamese political activists from meeting the U.S. Ambassador, the envoy said on Wednesday. Ambassador Michael Marine, who has called on the communist government to free people arrested in a "crackdown on dissidents" this year, told reporters only one out of five invited made it to his Hanoi residence on Monday.

"The others were prevented from coming either by being called in to the police station or police outside their homes preventing them from coming," Marine said. One of those was hit and injured by a car believed to be driven by a plainclothes police officer, other diplomats and a U.S.-based group that supports the activists said.

They identified her as Vu Thuy Ha, wife of cyber-dissident Pham Hong Son, who was freed from prison last year after his cause was championed by the United States and the European Union. Three weeks ago Marine said police manhandled the wives of activists who he had invited to have tea at his residence.

Hanoi rejects accusations of a crackdown, which rights groups say was initiated after the government won entry to the World Trade Organization and hosted an Asia-Pacific summit in November. Amnesty International said it has recorded more than 20 arrests since November, the latest on April 21 of writer Tran Khai Thanh Thuy. The 47-year-old was described by state-run media as "a hostile female element" charged under article 88 of the criminal code with "spreading propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." Last month, a court jailed a long-time dissident Catholic priest, Father Nguyen Van Ly for 8 years under the same statute. Two lawyers, Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, were arrested on March 6 and face similar charges at their trial, which is scheduled for May 11 in Hanoi People's Court.

Marine said the arrests were discussed in talks between U.S. and Vietnamese officials in Washington on Tuesday, part of a regular "human rights dialogue" between the former enemies, whose strong ties are founded mostly on trade. He described the talks as frank and constructive.

Monday, April 30 is the 32nd anniversary of the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam when Washington backed a South Vietnam government against the communist North. Diplomatic ties were restored in 1995. "We have made clear to Vietnamese officials that the government's crackdown on individuals whose sole crime is peaceful expression of their political views works against U.S.-Vietnamese efforts to strengthen the relationship," Marine said at a briefing in the U.S. Embassy. He said he expected a visit to the United States this year by Vietnam President Nguyen Minh Triet to go ahead as planned.

By Grant McCool - Reuters - April 25, 2007.